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Placement of Some Adjectives Can Affect Their Meaning
Adjectives in Front Often Have More Subjective Meaning
Put an adjective before a noun or after the noun in Spanish, and usually it makes only asubtle difference, if any, in the meaning. But there are some cases where the placement of the adjective makes significant enough of a difference that we would translate it differently in English.For an example, take the following two sentences: Tengo un viejo amigo. Tengo un amigo viejo. A "safe" translation of these two sentences would be fairly easy to come up with: "I have an old friend."But what does that mean? Does it mean that my friend is elderly? Or does it mean that the person has been a friend for a long time?
It may surprise you to find out that in Spanish the sentencesaren't so ambiguous, for viejo can be understood differently depending on where it is in relation to the noun that is described. Word order does make a difference. In this case, tengo un viejo amigotypically means "I have a longtime friend," and tengo un amigo viejo typically means "I have an elderly friend." Similarly, someone who has been a dentist for a long time is un viejo dentista, but adentist who is old is un dentista viejo. Of course it is possible to be both — but in that case the word order will indicate what you're emphasizing.
Viejo is far from the only adjective that functionsthat way, although the distinctions aren't nearly always as strong as they are with viejo. Here are examples of some of the more common such adjectives. Context still matters, and there may beexceptions, but these are guidelines to pay attention to:
* antiguo: la antigua silla, the old chair; la silla antigua, the antique chair
* grande: un gran hombre, a great man; un hombre grande, abig man
* mismo: el mismo atleta, the same athlete; el atleta mismo, the athlete himself
* nuevo: el nuevo libro, the brand-new book, the newly acquired book; el libro nuevo, the newly made...